Hey friends! A few months ago, I started a series called Pitfalls of the Slush Pile. This series is born from my months of experience as a first-reader for Apex Magazine (and loving every moment of it). After reading for a few months, I wanted to extend a helping hand to anyone interested in improving their chances to selling to a pro-magazine. Either for the first time, or the twenty-first time.

This post is not specific to Apex. It comes from conversations that I have had with first-readers and editors of other magazines. I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me.

So … what are we talking about this month? We’re going to talk about submitting, and the fear of submitting. About the opinions writers may have about those on the deciding end. And what we’re actually thinking when we open your story and begin reading. Essentially …

PITFALLS OF THE SLUSH PILE – WE’RE ROOTING FOR YOU

I didn’t go into slush reading out of a seething hatred for fiction--or for other writers. I went into slush reading because I love reading, and because I love stories. I also went into it because I want to find new writers I love, and new stories to be excited about. And I’ve found a lot of new writers I love through the slush, and gotten excited about a lot of stories (a lot, lot of stories).

What I mean to say is: we’re rooting for you. When I open up a file in the Apex Slush, I want it to be one I can send on to the editors. I’m hoping and crossing my fingers that it’s great. I’m excited to read another story I’ll love; excited to discover another favorite author.

From talking to other slush readers (both current and former) and editors of other magazines, this feeling is common. We want you to succeed. We’re excited to read your stories. We’re super excited to see repeat stories from you. We’re excited to see your first story, your second story, your third story.

I love getting repeat names in the slush. I love seeing how the writer has grown and improved since the last story. I’m excited to see what new things they have to offer me this go round versus before. It’s like having a conversation with an acquaintance. Submit enough times, and (for me) it’s like visiting with a friend.

I recently had to take a break from reading Apex slush due to a health concern and I missed the experience so much. I missed reading all those stories and discovering new authors and reading new work. I read a lot of published work, sure, but there’s a certain thrill of being able to read work before no one else does.

It’s like sharing in a secret.

I’m slowly getting back into it now as my health is improving, and I love opening up each new file to see what I’m going to get. I love the excitement that the title brings, that the first line brings. The story and characters and ending brings.

What does this all mean? We are not your enemy--those of us on the other side of the submissions process. We want you to succeed. We want to publish you. At no point in my process do I click on a file and think, “Oh I hope this person fails.” No. That never crosses my mind.

Editors, first readers, copy editors, management, no one on magazine staff is out to get you. We’re all doing our best to put the best finished product out there, and we’re hoping that you can be part of it when we open your story and begin reading.

So submit your work! We love to see it! And remember, we’re not scheming on how to reject you, no. We’re doing everything we can to see how you fit in.

We’ll get back to your regularly scheduled Pitfalls of the Slush Pile blog series soon, but I have a lot of news and wanted to update everyone on what’s going on with me writing wise (and mental health wise).

As a lot of you know, I had zero publications in 2017. Well, 2018 is already off to a great start! I have a story already up in Cotton Xenomorph! Cotton Xenomorph is wonderful lit-fic magazine for flash fiction and poetry that I adore. Not only do they publish wonderful and stunning work, but also my experience with them was stellar. I am looking forward to working with them again.

My story is called Rose Garden Funeral of Sorts. It’s a jilted lovers tale of gardening gone horribly wrong. It’s a piece I started at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Fiction last summer. For those of you who saw the YouTube video of my reading there, it’s the complete story from there.

I have been going at 150% since October (according to my husband, James). And that’s true. I have a small break coming up soon, and I’m going to see if I actually take a break, or if 150% becomes the new 100%.

My 150% has included completing five new short stories (more on those later), becoming a first reader for Apex magazine (and starting the Pitfalls of the Slush Pile blog series), almost completing the second draft of my fantasy YA WIP (I’ll be done next week!!), and going to a writing retreat at a convent (I did not burst into flames, but I do only own three appropriate tee shirts for a convent).

Well, friends. One of those five stories ("The Hollow Tree") sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies! It’s my third sale there, and my third pro-sale overall! I am now an Active Member of SFWA, which has been a goal of mine since I started writing, and I am thrilled!

But all hasn’t been sunshine and roses and full-steam ahead. In early March, I climbed out from under a six-month depression I didn’t even realize I was under. Then, a week later, fell prey to disabling anxiety that refused to leave and caused shortness of breath and a lot of staying in bed for two weeks.

How did I make it through? Writing.

Writing was one of the only things that got through the day during all that time. I’m happiest when I’m writing, because for those few hours, I forget that I’m mentally ill and I just pour myself into my characters and my worlds and become lost in them. The same thing can happen with reading, but when I’m reading, I still get distracted intrusive thoughts. When I’m writing, intrusive thoughts can’t compete with my intense focus.

But it wasn’t only writing. I had a lot of help, too.

I want to thank James, my therapist, Stella, and my friends who really helped carry me through those six months and those two weeks. Because of their help, I am ahead of schedule on all my projects and ready to attend the Futurescapes Writing Workshop in mid-April!

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone. Thanks for reading all of this, and thanks for your support of me. It really helps. Not only my writing confidence, but my belief in myself.

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE TV SHOW "LEGION" ON FX. DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS. IF YOU DO, THOUGH, READ ON MY FRIEND, READ ON.

I want to talk about LEGION, yes the show on FX.

I want to talk about it because I am a published writer with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type (for those of you new to this blog), and I have a lot to say about the show — both in how accurately it portrayed schizophrenia, and about the myths it cultivates.

Before we go any further, I want to say: I liked the show. I liked the show a lot. I am excited for another season; eager for it, even. For those of you familiar with an earlier post on television and mental illness, I did not watch season two of that show.

LEGION was a comprehensive show — its actors, writing, and composition gave three non-mentally ill friends a glimpse into my life. They were constantly questioning what was real and what was not real. For those of you who are confused, some of us with a schizophrenia disorder double/triple/quadruple check our reality to make sure that each thing we experience actually just happened. (At least I do. It’s why I drink so much caffeine -- this is exhausting.) My non-mentally ill friends left LEGION wondering if any of it ever happened, while I had no question that it did.

Who of us was right? Who knows? But I didn’t question David’s perception of reality. Yes, I was aware of when he was hallucinating and when he was delusional, but when David was in the real world experiencing real things, I believed everything.

I’m losing track. What problems did I have with LEGION? I’ll intersperse them with things I liked, because while I had some problems, there were also a lot of things I liked about the show. I found the show much easier to watch than BLACK SWAN, which did not go over well. I identified a lot with LEGION, and felt at home watching it. LEGION empowered me, but also unsettled me.

Let’s get into that shall we?In addition to being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type (where my delusions and hallucinations show up when I'm manic or depressed), I also have a Masters in Clinical Social work and worked as both a therapist and medical social worker for almost ten years before being declared disabled. I have a wider scope on my mental illness than most people who do not have my clinical background.

One of the DSM-V diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia is Delusional Thinking. Delusional Thinking can be as simple as, “I have bionic hearing.” Or it can be, “I don’t have schizophrenia, I have superpowers,” which is exactly the plot of LEGION. David doesn’t have schizophrenia, he has superpowers. Which is part of the genius of the show — he’s been trained not to think this way by a decade of doctors and time in Clockworks — but it makes for not such a healthy show for people with a schizophrenia disorder to be watching.

I am very stable. I take my medication as prescribed, and always have. My psychotic break was the scariest thing I have ever lived through, and I don’t want a repeat performance. So I take my medication. Plus, psychotic symptoms are frightening. Symptoms can still show up, and you bet I call my doctors the moment they do, but delusional thinking is more sneaky than that. Why? Cause it can be rationalized, sometimes by more delusional thinking. One moment, someone less stable than me is watching LEGION, and the next they’re off their medication because they could be convinced they’re telepathic, and they’ve come up with a million examples that it’s worked.

I’ve talked about the single story of a culture or ethnicity. This also works for mental illness. Does LEGION break away from the “single story” of the violent schizophrenic? Well … sort of. Before we get to that, let’s go into some things I liked about the show.

David (portrayed by Dan Stevens) exhibits a lot of symptoms that I have been trying to explain to people years. Symptoms people have told me are “part of life” or “normal” or “part of the aging process” when I’m not even 40 yet.

It was nice to see myself on screen. Things like his aphasia (forgetting words), or when Syd and him switch bodies and she complains about how loud the day room in the hospital was (filtering out noise almost impossible for us). But what I really liked was seeing the exact same gesture and pause for collection when someone accuses him of sounding “crazy” when he’s really reporting the truth.

And again, I believed David. If he said something happened. I believed it. It was interesting to find out my non-mentally ill friends did not. They had problems believing his point of view. They were more likely to believe Syd point of view episodes than his.

Now, did this contribute to the single story of the violent schizophrenic? YES.

More than once on the show, people in places of authority at Summerland say, “Schizophrenics are violent.” Saying it this way implies it is an absolute truth applying to all people with a schizophrenia disorder. This is not an absolute truth. Not all people with schizophrenia are violent, not all of them harm people, or animals, or themselves. The show did a very good job through depictions of David’s memories and people in authority spouting myth, to perpetuate this well-held belief. But it’s simply not true, and perpetuating this myth is stigmatizing and does nothing but makes it harder for people with schizophrenia disorders (and other mental illnesses) to live openly in society.

Another thing I wasn’t a fan of about the show — and this comes up in the last episode, so, spoilers — David says that as a person with schizophrenia he can’t live a normal life and fall in love and have a family.This is entirely untrue. It is in fact easier for David to have a family than a woman with schizophrenia as he would not have to go off his medications for nine months to gestate his new bouncing son or daughter. And while many people with schizophrenia have trouble forming long-lasting relationships and friendships, many others have no issue and get married.

Full disclosure: I am married. My husband and I have been together since 1999 and married for 11 years. I also have a Masters degree and a mortgage. I have a dog that I train every day. I held a professional job that required a license and I renewed that license twice during my time at it. Since having to leave that job due to being declared disabled, I took up writing. I have since been published six times in less than two years.

People with schizophrenia can live normal lives. They can even live exceptionalones. Saying something like that, while it makes sense for the character, and not having it be countered by Syd or anyone else, leaves the myth hanging in the air like unopposed fact. People can believe what they hear on television. They think the myth is a truth, because the actor’s portrayal and the script-writing has done such a solid job of breathing accuracy into the mental illness so far.

Was the show beautiful and well acted and well written? Yes. Did I like it? Yes. Do I want to dispel these myths they talked about? Yes. Do I want to say that it might not be the most healthy portrayal of schizophrenia out there? Yes. And I know he didn’t actually have schizophrenia, and that’s the point, but that’s also why the show isn’t healthy.

But the show is good! I want more. That’s why I wanted to write this. I can voice my problems as a writer and a person with a similar disorder and say, “Yes, but …” and still enjoy what I’m watching. Being entertained isn’t binary for me.

Also, the comics are totally different. If you want to engage me on a discussion about the comics, you might want to talk to someone else. Apparently they didn’t even touch on much of the original source material for the show, and they changed a lot. I haven’t read the comics, so I can’t engage anyone on a discussion about the comics. The show? Let’s go.

In a cabin in Tennessee, I rewrote my story. I rewrote the story I’ve been told about myself dozens of times; the story where I die tragically, the story where I kill, the story where I have no future, the story where I am not and cannot be the hero.

Madcap Retreats hosted their Writing Cross Culturally workshop last weekend in the Smoky Mountains. It was a four-day whirlwind of lectures and panels and it not only changed my writing, it changed my life. Justina Ireland was kind enough to critique the first six pages of my novel-in-progress. She gave me tips that will revolutionize the book, my storytelling techniques, and blow my work out of the new-writer waters.

Close to the end of our time, I said to her, “I can’t be the hero of my stories.”She looked at me with such pity. “But you can, though,” she said.”“No, you don’t understand,” I said, petting Stella. “I can’t.”“I think you can,” she said. “I know you can.”

The next day, I turned that interaction over and over in my head. I thought about the TED Talk we watched by Chimamanda Adichie about the dangers of a single story. I thought about microagressions and power vs culture in fiction. I thought about Foucault and his Panopticon. I thought about reclaiming words like “crazy” and “disabled,” the way Julie Murphy has reclaimed the word “fat.” I thought about social work concepts like “reframing,” and how could I use that to change my story.

Upon being diagnosed, I have paid very close attention to representations of myself in fiction/film/the news. People like me rarely survive, and we’re often cast as the villain. The only occasion I can think of where people like me survive is in A Beautiful Mind, and in that movie John Nash doesn’t take his medication — not an option for me. (I haven’t read Erica L. Satifka’s book Stay Crazy yet, but it’s on my To-Read list. I don’t want to discount that her book might have a different ending.)

That doesn’t even get into my disability: what I can’t do, what I’m unable to experience. During the five days in the cabin in the mountains, I spent a lot of time in my room, alone with Stella. I couldn’t socialize with the 70 people in the cabin. So, instead I spent time laying on the bed, soothed by the white noise of all the conversations bleeding through the walls. Stella stayed by my side, sleeping soundly.

If I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have been able to attend meals, panels, lectures. I couldn’t have made my 5:15am ride to the airport on Monday. Thing is, nobody at the retreat said a thing to me about it, nobody pitied me, until I got home and told my family. It was just something I needed to do, and I did it. If I had tried to socialize, I would have had to leave early, and might have missed out on a life-altering experience.

As a disabled person, I know my limitations, and I know what I have to do to get to the next day. This isn’t something to pity, this isn’t something to mourn. The story of the disabled person is one of constant adaptability, of constant evolution. As the world isn’t built for us, we must always change and morph into ways to fit ourselves into our world’s Western cognitive and physical narrative.

So here’s the thing:If an able-bodied person spent half a day in my body, in my head, they couldn’t get done what I get done in that time. I’m willing to bet they’d have problems just getting out of bed, which is something I have to convince myself to do every day, cause I’m besieged every morning by reasons my life is terrible and reasons to stay in bed.

But my life isn’t terrible!

There is no moral failing in being disabled. There is nothing inherently evil about being mentally ill. There’s this immense pressure in Western Culture to conform. To “Be Like Ike” as it were. So we believe that any deviation from that Western Cultural norm is capital W-Wrong. We believe ourselves to be Wrong, that there must be something so bad about us for our bodies and our minds to have failed us. I know I’ve asked so many times, “What’s wrong with me? What did I do to deserve this?”

My brain chemistry is not like other people’s. I have to take medication so that I can function daily, so that I can get done what I want to get done. I have to walk and I have a service dog for me, for my independence, so that I can be the best me I can be. Not so that I can be a better person. I am a good person, I know that. I don’t have to prove that to anyone, I just have to continue to be me, to be good.

As disabled people, we are not moral failures. We are not bad Americans. We are not bad people.

I am trying to reframe how I talk about myself. Because I know that my husband, while a wonderful and amazing man, couldn’t make it through two days in my head. That makes me some kind of superhero for getting done what I’ve done in the past two and a half years. Hell, for even getting this blog post done. Hell, for even waking up and getting dressed this morning.

So I’m like a mutant. Not like a Creature From The Black Lagoon type mutant. I’m talking X-Men type deal. This isn’t to say I’m having delusions that I have superhuman powers that I can stop time like Quicksilver or that I have super fast healing powers like Wolverine or something. It’s just that I can do more every day than your average able-bodied white dude. That makes me pretty special. That makes me like, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters special.

UPDATE: I have come across this interview with Sam Esmail where he delves more into Elliot's psychology and discusses his process of writing Mr. Robot. It contradicts several of the points made in my post below using Elliot and Mr. Robot as an example, but I'm leaving my post up as a problem with Entertainment in general, and acknowledging here that I was incorrect about Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail and Elliot.

Sam Esmail has proven, through this interview, to be portraying mental illness respectfully. Please read the interview.

I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. I also have generalized anxiety disorder and PTSD. These three diagnoses don’t work so great in tandem together, but they all work within specific confines of signifiers that makes them diagnosable, treatable, and medicateable.

In Mr. Robot, the main character, Elliot, classified himself as “schizo.” Okay, let’s first forget about how much I hate that word and how every person on I’ve met on the schizophrenia spectrum hates that word, but whatever. But Elliot had a little bit more going on than schizophrenia. Schizophrenia includes a specific set of symptoms, both negative and positive. Some of the most popular of schizophrenia's symptoms include: hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and disorganized speech.

But Elliot’s symptoms included PTSD flashbacks, the dissociation associated with dissociative disorder, and depression, along with schizophrenia's delusions and paranoia.

This is old hat, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. See, entertainment loves to do this. When they can’t find a diagnosis that’s exactly what they want on the batshit crazy spectrum, they call the person "schizophrenic" or "sociopathic" and give them a cocktail of symptoms knitted together from a hodgepodge of media.

That's not how it works, and it’s the main reason I’m not watching Mr. Robot, Season Two.

Mental Illnesses Are Not Convenient Plot Devices. They Are Real Things.

How about I illustrate it this way? When a character has Type II Diabetes, they don't also get left-side paralysis (stroke), and need a back brace (scoliosis), do they? No, they don't. Movies, TV, and books don’t give their physically sick characters a patchwork of symptoms pulled from the ICD-10. I don't know why this is, because apparently some writers think the DSM-V is a grab-bag at character creation.

This is just plain lazy. Why? I'll tell you why.

Writing within rulesets is what makes characters and worlds great. Why do monsters have rules? So the monster has limits to what it can do, otherwise Tokyo would have been toast. Why does magic have to come at a price? So it does not become overpowered, otherwise Lord of the Rings would have been the Gandalf/Saruman show. If a mental illness is not its defined self, it is not diagnosable, it is not treatable, and it is not medicateable.

Sure, plenty of mentally ill people shun treatment and medication, but the fact is, they can be helped, when they eventually choose to get help. I chose to get help, and even with my mental illness soup, I was able to get a Bachelor’s Degree, a Masters Degree, and do a career switch in between. After being declared disabled 8 years into that second career, I took up writing, which has gone pretty okay so far.

So those of us with multiple diagnoses aren’t lost causes, even when it may look like we back ourselves into corners with what we can only or cannot do. When we try hard enough and take care of ourselves well enough, we can do amazing things. We don’t become unpredictable timebombs of uncertain outcome like Elliot who can only be talked down by his own dissociative ramblings.

We build up our own coping mechanisms, because PTSD flashbacks are scary, hallucinations are scary, realizing you’ve been delusional is scary, being talked out of a paranoid thinking stream and understanding that you need more medication is the worst. The more I watched Season One of Mr. Robot, the more I grew frustrated with Elliot. I could see him breaking down and the hell he was collecting around himself, and even when he realized his father was dead, he didn’t break down enough not to seek that illusion out again.

I was so upset about this both as a mentally ill person and a former therapist that I almost didn’t watch the Season One finale. It was so incredibly unbelievable to me from both sides of the coin that I couldn’t understand where the writers got the idea that this was okay. And then I did watch the finale, and it was more like watching a series of PTSD flashbacks, without anything to flash back to.

Writing characters like this is so convenient, but it ignores that there are people out there who do actually have these diagnoses, and they don’t work this way. It ignores the writing rules of Research, and to People your work before you show it to the world. Pro Tip: Mentally ill people don’t foam at the mouth and some of us can give honest and well-thought-out critique.

So, just as you have people of different races, genders, religions, and sexual identities than you read your work for authenticity — have a mentally ill person read your work when it features mental illness. You’ll be surprised as to their input, as, although your reader may not wear their mental illness on their sleeve, it is a very big part of their lives, and they have opinions.

Like I said: Mental Illnesses Are Not Plot Devices.They Are Real Things.And They Happen To Real People.

So stop giving made up ones to made up people. It makes you look kind of silly to us.

UPDATE: I have come across this interview with Sam Esmail where he delves more into Elliot's psychology and discusses his process of writing Mr. Robot. It contradicts several of the points made in my post below using Elliot and Mr. Robot as an example, but I'm leaving my post up as a problem with Entertainment in general, and acknowledging here that I was incorrect about Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail and Elliot.

Sam Esmail has proven, through this interview, to be portraying mental illness respectfully. Please read the interview.

Mental illness. It’s all in your head, right? But what about when it isn’t?

You know what I’m talking about. When the depression is so bad your limbs are too heavy to move, your eyelids are glued shut, and breathing takes too much effort. When the only relief you can get is by sighing, crying, or just laying down to think for hours. Talking about what you’re feeling is out; that makes it worse, that makes it real. All you can do is curl up, hug yourself, and be weighed down by your own ineptitude.

Or how about when anxiety hits so hard you vomit your guts out? Your stomach stabs itself to death from the inside, so anything you eat or drink only Brings The Pain. Migraines, neck aches, chest pain … You know it, you’re dying, you’re sure of it. Forget going to the doctor, they already think you’re crazy, because you are. So you sit in distress, waiting for whatever is bothering you to go away so you can eat, drink, and be merry again. But what if what makes you happy is what is tormenting you? Oh the humanity!

Sleep only brings nightmares. Then you’re up for hours in the middle of the night window-shopping online in a zombified haze, lulling yourself into a retail stupor. You’ve got to get your mind off what you were dreaming about. If it’s not nightmares, it’s charlie horses, or your foot’s at the wrong angle again, toes bent all wrong, and you’re pretty sure you’ve been drinking enough water and taking your vitamins. Right? Right?

Mental illness isn’t always in your head, it has physical repercussions. The mind and body are connected (duh, Jordan), and when the mind is in duress, it tries to tell you first with cognitive signals, and when it’s fed up you’re not taking the bait, it makes you hurt. The ultimate PAY ATTENTION TO ME move. But sometimes you can’t slow life down, even when you’re doing everything to put the breaks on, because life doesn’t slow down when you want it to. Sometimes the mental pain you’re experiencing is the reason you can’t slow down thus creating the physical pain.

Congratulations. You’re a living Catch-22.

For about a decade before I had to stop working, I racked up doctors’ visits and specialists’ fees trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Neurologists, physical therapy, MRIs, CT Scans, Emergency Room visits for shortness of breath or chest pain, a colonoscopy, ENTs for chronic nosebleeds, gastroenterologists for constant stomach aches — but I always left with a clean bill of health. No abnormalities on the MRIs or CT Scans. Nothing but a bill for the ER visits. The physical therapy fixed nothing. Neurologists told me I was wasting their time. Gastroenterologists told me I was the most healthy patient they’d ever had.

Then my primary care doctor referred me to an acupuncturist and everything changed. She started treating me for stress. She still is. I see her once a week and it’s one of the things that keeps me functioning (plus daily walking meditation, which she suggested).

I couldn’t be me without her. Anxiety medication has always put me right to sleep in the middle of what I was doing, only to have me wake up 6-8 hours later, even more anxious about everything I had yet to do that day. But with Dr. Zhang’s help and the walking meditation she suggested, I am a mostly-functioning human being. She is an amazing person.

Yes, still sometimes the anxiety and stimulation is overwhelming. College Reunions, Conventions, large family functions such as weddings and holiday celebrations, two social engagements in one day — these are things that will ruin me for a week or more afterwards. Right now, as I am typing this, my neck aches for no other reason than stress. I know it's stress because I’ve had nightmares every night for the past five. I think all this is because I couldn't do my walking meditation for four days because I messed my foot up somehow.

Like I said, life gets in the way. It's not so easy.

Before we got our dog, we had a fish tank. We were told it would be good practice for owning a dog because fish were easy pets. WRONG. A fish tank is a delicate ecosystem where if one small thing goes awry, the entire tank goes to hell. We were constantly rebooting our fish tank at first because we thought we were terrible people who killed fish every two weeks, but it turns out we were buying fish and plants from a shop that was selling only diseased fish and plants.

I am a fish tank. I have to keep my body in a delicate balance, constantly tending to every part of the ecosystem to ensure the entire whole works and operates at optimum levels to be a presentable part of the décor. But the problem is, all my parts came from a place that provides diseased and broken parts, so I’m constantly playing triage and catch-up. I have to work longer hours just to make sure I can go out to dinner with people on Tuesday and have a “stable” conversation. Oh, and bonus points for not feeling like throwing up when I get home.

Mental illness isn’t all in your head. It’s all over. It’s a whole system thing. The brain is the director of your show, and it decides where the pain goes for extra dramatic effect. You're just constantly trying to make sure everything is okay all the time and it's a lot of work, constant work, not easy work. If you're in similar shoes to mine, congrats, you're amazing, and you're doing a great job.

So … from a fish tank to a Merkava, I’m sorry in advance if I puke on your shoes. It's only because I'm having a wonderful time and don't want to leave.

“I knew a guy who was disabled. He had a stroke/broke both his legs/lost the use of his fingers/messed up his hips/etc. But he pushed through, and you can, too! If you just try hard and work hard, you can get over your disability, come out the other side, and get back to work.”

It begins with me being interrupted, where my story stopped before it began. These well-meaning people with all their “expertise” just had to jump in before they’ve heard the whole story, because they felt the need to help. But because they refused to wait, they only ended up showing their ignorance, their unwillingness to listen, and their lack of empathy.

As a disabled woman, my voice gets pushed aside all the time by people who want to offer their lack of knowledge of my situation as a way to do things better. Sometimes they even try to better reframe my situation, when they refused to hear what my situation is.

In the case of the disability example given above - my disability will never get better, it will only get worse. I manage my symptoms every day, monitor them, and live day to day while trying not to look too far into the future. I do not have broken feet, or something physical therapy will help; it's something I will never, ever overcome.

The well-meant, unsolicited, terrible advice became more and more frequent the fewer adult accomplishments I had. As a married woman with no children, people who are parents sometimes felt the need to parent me. I reacted to this about as badly as a rebellious teenager, so my friends learned quickly not to do this, but some casual acquaintances interact with me the same way I see them interact with their children. They tell me what to do, how to do it, and in that same mothering/fathering tone of voice.

Now that I am not only childless, but jobless (because apparently “Writer” doesn’t count), the expertise and advice rains down. “You know what you should do …” is a phrase that prefaces almost everything when party conversation is focused on me, when my close friends and family are out of reach. So I came up with a game. I try to see how quickly I can get off the uncomfortable topic of ME and onto the more interesting topic of THEM. My record so far is 60 seconds.

It’s not that I’m beyond accepting advice. I belong to two professional critique groups. I’m open to hearing what people have to say about my situation when they listen without interrupting, and have taken the time to actively engage my situation.

I’m eager to listen to you if you’re not talking just to process your own ideas. I go to therapy, my husband and I believe in open communication, I believe nothing can be solved without talking about the issue. But that requires really listening, and taking time to consider the information, not just jumping in with a solution when you want to talk.

The disabled aren’t the only people whose voices are talked over before they’re heard. A lot of marginalized groups in the United States have had issues where their own situation gets explained to them by those outside of it, because those outside believe they understand it, even though they never, ever could.

Kinda like how R Kelly believed he could fly and touch the sky, but that totally didn't happen.

So if you’re looking in at someone’s situation, take time to listen. Don’t get out your Jump To Conclusions Mat before the story is over. People’s lives have twist endings, they’re not narratives as simple as Dick & Jane.

If you’re outside someone’s paradigm, whether they’re a person of color, LGBTQIA, mentally ill, disabled, of a different religious faith or denomination, or even on a different side of the political spectrum - take time to listen to what the person has to say. Don’t assume you understand, because you can’t. Don’t think you know what they’re going to say, because you don’t. Just like people’s lives have twist endings, people aren’t made from cookie-cutters - because you know one disabled person does not mean you know them all.

Listen, truly listen. You may learn something, or see something new in someone that makes you love them more. Become an expert in someone else because you took time to know them, not because you took time to try to help.

Whenever I use it, I feel like a victim, and not a survivor. And I am a survivor. I had PTSD. Had. I don’t suffer from it anymore. Through the help of friends and my therapist, I worked through the trauma that caused it, and am now symptom free.

Whenever I hear the verb "trigger" applied to me or situations that aggravate my anxiety, I feel like people are taking away my agency as the main character in my life. As if I am not a person who Acts, but instead can only React. I don’t want that, because I don't think it's true.

With my Masters in Social Work, I am hard wired to help and provide comfort for people who are hurting, in pain, or in need. My favorite part of the day is when I walk our dog to the Community Center so people can pet her. Or when I talk to any of the homeless people in the neighborhood when I'm out and about. Making a stranger smile makes my day; I love making people happy. And it hurts me to hear about people in pain.

Which is why right now is so hard.

It’s not that I don’t care about politics. I do. But seeing the hate and mud-slinging surrounding the US Presidential candidates on both news outlets and social media aggravates me. I voted for who I voted for in the primary, and that’s all I can do. I can’t go to political rallies, or march in protests, or be in places with large crowds because of my severe mental illness. I know this, and I’m comfortable with that.

But to read what some of my long-time friends say on social media, I’m part of the problem with America, because I don’t act. I ignore all that talk, because anyone who says stuff like that is speaking from ignorance. They are forgetting about the chronically ill, the severely mentally ill, and the disabled who can’t leave their homes, or can't be in crowds. They're forgetting about anyone with transportation issues. And about the incarcerated and infirmed, who can’t leave their nursing homes or prison cells to stand up for what they believe in.

And this brings me to terrorism.

I grew up in London between 1991-1995, where bombs in Underground stations and other high-traffic areas were something we lived with every day. The Tube stopping between stations for “suspicious packages” (read: forgotten groceries) happened once or twice a week. Selfridges being closed due to a bomb threat on a run-of-the-mill Tuesday was normal.

We lived in a culture of fear. But I never saw a Londoner afraid, so I wasn’t either. It was a part of life: “Oh, Edgeware Road exploded, guess I’ll walk to Warwick Avenue.” "Harrod's is closed today, I'll come back tomorrow." And the Tube stations filled with litter because they took the rubbish bins away, so the trains tossed candy wrappers and discarded tickets all over the platform in cyclones of filth.

But now, 20 years removed from living with day-to-day terror, all I have are my New York Times alerts coming in. And they come in daily. Most recently - Pakistan, EgyptAir, Brussels, Turkey. And every time I see them, a pit opens up in my stomach where all my pain can go.

When I was visiting Tombstone with my father in November, terror struck Paris. I became overwhelmed, and had to sit in a dark room listening to Beethoven's 6th Symphony to reconnect with myself. Now the attacks only disarm me, halting me mid-step the middle of doing whatever I was doing. Because I know the only thing I can do is turn away, otherwise I’ll be rendered inert.

Because I am disabled human being, undone by the stress caused by caring.

I don't want sympathy or empathy for this. I don't want pity. I'm a survivor, not a broken thing. When I found out I couldn’t work anymore because it was my caring and my need to help people that was destroying me, it was Fate's cruelest trick: my heart was too big, and it was consuming the rest of me because my brain was too broken to control it.

As a survivor, I’m not triggered by terrorism. I’m not triggered by the hate I am seeing surface during this election. When I am exposed to these things, I simply modify my behavior, because that’s what survivors do. We adapt, we change, and we move on.

It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we have to make it to tomorrow. And the next tomorrow, and the one after that. Because the only way people grow stronger and live to see the next mountain peak is to put one foot in front of the other, and ignore their fear of heights.

Poor grooming is commonly associated with mental disability. So much so, it's considered one of the qualifiers whether a person is considered disabled or functioning. Poor grooming includes whether the patient has showered, the state of their clothing (clean vs dirty), basically whether they look like they made any effort on their appearance at all. This is judged on whether the amount of effort has gone up or down since the last visit. If it's gone up, the patient's improving. Down? Declining.

I always make an effort on my appearance. Every. Single. Day.

One of the things I love about being a woman is playing with my appearance. I love picking out outfits, and changing my hairstyle every few years. Makeup is so much fun to play with. And I have the kind of hair which can go from stick straight to a headful of ringlets with minimal effort -- it just takes one different product.

I am a chameleon, as long as the clothes are black and the eye makeup dark.

Because I love playing with beauty products and clothes, people are confused when I have to bust out the disability card. When trying to order sandwich ingredients from memory, I had to explain to the guy making my sandwich that because of my mental disability, I couldn't remember every single vegetable they had for my veggie sub, so could he list them, please?

“You don’t look like a mentally disabled person,” he said.

I leaned over the counter like a predator. “Really?” I asked. “What does a mentally disabled person look like?”

He looked at his hands. “Mayo or oil?”

The self-checkout at the library is too confusing for me. I've had to leave books behind before rather than take them home because I got too frustrated with it. So, I decided to ask the librarians at the circulation desk for help. I'm disabled, I can ask for help now, I decided. Previous in my life, it'd be bite the bullet, kiddo. Life sucks.

Two out of four times, I got attitude when asking for help. One of those times I was even asked to prove my disability status. Thank goodness for my bus card for disabled transportation in my wallet, which says ADA on it, in bright red.

Yes, I can be seen on my regular 3 mile walk every day on the same street, but you’ll only see me in the grocery store to once a month pick up my meds. Every grocery store is so overstimulating, any time I visit one, I'm stuck watching TV the rest of the day. (Hey, while this may be great for you, I'd like to get other stuff done)

My husband opened his second solo art show last Saturday. It was great, and I'm so proud of him. But I spent the entire week before not working on my book, as the pressure of writing with all the chaos surrounding his show preparations brought up symptoms. So I took it easy, and took care of myself, which is a 24 hour job on its own.

Whereas I may know how to do my hair ten different ways, or get that smokey-eye look three different ways, I can’t join you at that concert, or that bar, or go dancing. Yes, I may always dress like I'm ready to go out and do stuff, but dinner and a move is how I live on the edge these days.

If I go to a gallery opening, party, or political event, I’m out for the rest of the week. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. I need to go back to my bunker and live in my head for a while. I'll let you know when it's safe to hang out again.

No, I can’t drive. But yes, I donated my car and that felt great. Yes, I have trouble playing video games like I used to. But I do play them anyway, because I love them. Just because I can’t do it all doesn’t mean I don’t do it at all. And while I can’t see my favorite band band in concert, it doesn’t mean I don’t listen to them really loud in my house. I still love music, just in a smaller, very exclusive, venue.

So my disability is invisible. It’s not that I’m trying to pass for normal, although I've been accused of that. I’m trying to pass for me. Because if I ran errands in pajamas, no makeup, and my hair a mess, I'd be passing for somebody else.

That is me trying too hard.

I don’t wear makeup, play with my hair, and plan an outfit because it’s expected of me. I do it because I want it; because I like it. Because it’s something I love doing. I’m sorry if it makes me look like less of what you think I am, but that’s not my problem. Trying to look like a diagnosis is a very hard costume, indeed, and I've never been one to conform or dress for other people. I do all this prep-work for me.

My disability will remain invisible, because I need to be me while I take care of me. And if people are going to be rude, deny me services, or be completely unhelpful because I am me and not who they think I should be, that’s their problem, not mine.

They’re the ones that have to live with themselves at the end of the day.

Psychosis is a lonesome thing. The symptoms set me apart from the rest of the world. Pedestrians become demons, trucks have malicious intent, and music contains hidden messages meant only for me. Even my sleep isn’t safe. Dreams that would be comedies for anyone else become private nightmare worlds. Sharing them is hazardous: will people laugh, or will they feign understanding? I have to choose my audience carefully.

But without an audience, I become truly psychotic. I succumb to the hidden messages, the malicious intent grows ever darker until I refuse to leave the house, concocting manifestos instead of novels. I know better. When this happened on January 5th, I made phone calls - to my psychiatrist, to my therapist, to my husband, and to my parents.

My husband, James, with an art show pending, skipped his Tuesday studio time to take care of me. My mother, retiring on February 1st, took six days off work in New York City to take care of me in Ohio. My father called me every day. I talked to my therapist for an hour on the phone before James arrived home. My psychiatrist called in an increase to one of my medications. Everyone agreed the situation was temporary, set to right itself once the social obligations of the holiday had waned and I was back to my more solitary, less of a butterfly, lifestyle.

I wrote an article on Salon about how important James is to my mental health. I’ve talked to my friends several times about how without my family’s resources, I would be in much worse shape than I am. I know, as a former social worker, the state people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders are in who have to rely on state-sponsored care and the medications Medicaid will pay for. I am one of the lucky ones, and I don’t take that for granted, I’ve helped those less fortunate than me.

I’ve also seen people with mental illnesses and physical illnesses who suffer alone, and how they steadily decline. Without the support of friends or loved ones, the darkness creeps in, and it’s easy to believe the lies your head tells you about yourself, about your friends, about the world around you. I value my friends, they’re all wonderful people, and I would do anything I can for them.

But there’s only so much I can do. On the 5th, when my mind broke, I had to cancel three social engagements and couldn’t go out to eat. I couldn’t go to the grocery store, or even go to Staples to buy a ream of paper, as I’d run out. All of that was too overwhelming. Even today, almost two weeks later, I had to step out of World Market after two minutes because the experience was tipping me over the edge. It was too bright, there were too many things, and I was finding it hard to breathe.

So I had a cigarette outside in the cold. Because that made sense.

Since the 5th, David Bowie died. Alan Rickman died. And James and I celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Still, I managed to stay in love with the world by trying to make everyone have a good day. I was more concerned with everyone else than I was for myself. I would get through this the same way I’d gotten through everything else. My role models have always been the Martin Luther King, Jr or Mother Teresa type. People who waged into difficult situations and came through the other side with more resolve to keep Doing Good. It’s why I became a social worker. I want to help people get there, no matter what happens to me.

So when James got hand-picked for an art show next month, I encouraged it. Even if it meant I would be left alone more often. I could work more, buckle down and really get things done. James needs this more than I need him home right now. This is important for him, for his recovery from the loss of his father, to the furthering of his work as an artist.

It’s not only important for me to take care of myself, but also to take care of the people around me. I have to allow myself time to breathe, but for them also to spread their wings and become who they need to be. From my husband, to my mother, to the baristas at my favorite coffee shop, to the woman who sold me my shredder today. Every person I meet, I have the chance to make them have a better day. If that’s the little bit I’m able to do to make the world a better place anymore with my capabilities, I am damn well going to do it every single day.

There’s other things I do to keep the music from talking to me again, to keep devils and demons from appearing to me on the sidewalk, and to keep the nightmares at bay. Those are management, those are things I have to do. All of this? Love. Compassion. Kindness. Patience. Warmth. These are things I choose to do. Because I believe to have people do good, you have to do good yourself. Every bit of good, no matter what you’re dealing with. No matter how hard it is.

So remember, when you're mired in it, whatever IT is: Reach out. Call that friend.They love you back, and they’ll make you smile.

The first time my doctors wanted me to go on disability, I refused. I thought it was quitting, admitting to everyone and myself that I was broken, which was something I'd spent over a decade trying to avoid. Instead I continued working, only to be waylaid by a bigger, badder version of what ailed me six years later.

This time, my psychiatrist told me, I didn't have a choice. It wasn't a factor of would I be able to work, or should I be working, it was that working was flat out impossible.

But this time, I had a backup plan.

I'd always loved writing. From scribbling out half-baked beginnings on Post-It Notes while working at the 1-Hour Photo, to my 19 year fan fiction obsession, storytelling had been a long-time hobby. At Kenyon, I joined the legions of would-be poets, reading out poorly edited free-verse about breasts or cigarettes in falling down barns.

You see, the episode that stopped me from working was in June. But I'd started working on a novel in April.

It was a task I'd taken on lightly. I figured it would be easy with my experience at roleplaying and writing about Star Wars. Besides, I'd been thinking about it for two years, so the plunge into character development, crafting scenes and chapters, and writing an ending couldn't be that hard, right?

So ... I'm still working on that novel, and I've learned a lot.

I traded one profession I was head over heels in love with for another. Social Work is not a career someone enters into lightly. I left my MSW Program a different person than I was when I entered it. Ditto with writing. I changed again. If I thought I was compassionate, patient, willing to help, and observant before, I have become only moreso, but in a different way.

I started a writers group for my friends in May of 2014. It was unstructured, like my writing then. I didn't follow any rules for critique or process, much like my narrative had no structure and my dialog followed no rules of punctuation. Now, I host a critique group of six writers with Operational Guidelines and a formal critique structure. We schedule two months in advance and submit our pieces a week ahead of time to allow for ample time for reading.

I am also happy to report that I have formalized my dialog tags and learned how narrative works.

When I had to change professions it wasn't by choice. I turned what had always been a hobby into a career out of necessity, as I have always had a work ethic that precludes me from consuming all Netflix has to offer as a vocation.

I had to learn to structure my days, more than they ever were in my eight years as a social worker. I am my own boss, something I learned how to do in my former profession, which required me to make my own executive decisions and prioritize my tasks and time in a maelstrom of change.

What I am saying to you is: change is not the end of the world, and hard life choices are not armageddon. It's what we do in the wake of those decisions that make us who we are and decide who we will become. I could have followed my first idea about disability and quit entirely, but that's not who I am, and it never will be.

Hell, I won't even quit smoking.

I tell myself I'm a writer because that's who and what I want to be. It's the power in the language that gets me out of bed in the morning, gets me to read, gets me to walk the dog, exercise, eat breakfast, and continue working. Even though my first priority is taking care of myself, I do it all under the pretense that I'm a writer, not under the pretense that I'm broken.

I make these choices because they keep me stable. Watching every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation will not make me feel better. Reorganizing the (now obsolete) DVDs on the shelf will only send me staring at the ceiling contemplating the inevitability of decay. I have to decide to do work every day, to be active, to keep moving forward.

And while I build this new persona of me - a writer, a confident person, the Me I have always wanted to be - I have to prepare for the future. There may be more choices ahead that may sideline me. Further career changes. More abilities and people lost. But I walk calmly into the darkness as my flashlight guides me, because I refuse to fear the dark.